| Fairy Tales, Folklore & Mythology |
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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Romance of the Unicorn Sep 16, 2005
By Rochelle Weber
Romance of the Unicorn is a marvelous ride on a flying carpet through a magical world of wise women, gallant men, and magical creatures. It carried me away from my humdrum world with its suspenseful quest and gentle humor. I loved the strength of the women in this world and the balanced relationships between the genders. It is a fairy tale for our time.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A fantasy that kept me reading Sep 02, 2005
By Guillermo Ramon
Cynthia Joyce Clay's The Romance of the Unicorn is a wonderful fantasy. When Elayne's cat is turned into a troll, she buys it clothes and tries to get a diaper on it. This was very funny. When Elayne is shown suffering, she instantly agrees to help. Elayne is not given to falling into emotional fits. She reacts practically to extreme situations--a funny switch on the New Age ditz characters. I also enjoyed Clay's sense of what technologies could have been developed in other histories. For instance, a toilet is very simple; there is no reason an iron age culture could not have invented them and used them like we do. After all, the ancient Greeks had "vomitoriums" .
Further, many fantasy stories do not mention beliefs of the afterlife,, Clay does this well. The characters believe in reincarnation, this belief is acted upon for problem solving in the story. Finally the story is romantic. Although Elayne was dumped by her boyfriend. Yet, a villain in the magical world echoes him, giving Elayne reason to get over him. Riding a unicorn, the hero rescues Elayne, starting a love affair. This is a very funny, intriguing, at times sad, and exciting story.
Lyrical Fantasy-a don't miss Feb 05, 2012
By Mallory_Supernatural Aficionado
Readers of Ms. Clay's wonderful collection, "New Myths of the Feminine Divine," will have already delighted in heroine Elayne and cat Velcro, protagonists of "The Icebox of Vengeance." I have seldom read a tale as gratifying as this one, and so I am overjoyed to find a novel-length expansion of this story here in "The Romance of the Unicorn," a fantasy novel in which our heroine Elayne, and her cat-turned-troll (here named "Keen," enter a magical world unbeknownst to any "normal" Earthlings. Of course, once Elayne comes to terms with the transubstantiation of her cat, and discovers another in a similar situation, she is attuned to magical surroundings and unearthly events, and as the millennia-old saying would have it, "Once the student is ready, the teacher will appear." In this case, a more pertinent translation might be, "Once the human is attuned, the Magic does appear."
Elayne is a well-mannered and courteous young lady who is a practicing psychic in Cambridge: she reads Tarot, conducts séances, practices Numerology for clients, and so forth. At Halloween, just a few days after she has realized her boyfriend and she are not suited, she is cleaning out the old fridge she'd bought some while back, after her original refrigerator gave up the ghost (and laid a curse on her). "Philco," which so reminds her of the old fridge of her childhood, is a magical appliance in itself, frequently vanishing food items and replacing it with very odd foodstuffs indeed (hence the cat Keen's transubstantiation into curious, adventurous trolldom). Keen is not the only adventurer in the family, and when Elayne's electricity goes off (the only house in the area), and by candle- and flashlight she discovers "Philco" has what amounts to a back door-well, off she is, and off Keen is, too, entering into a magical fantasy land, where Elayne gets to play heroine for real this time.
Ms. Clay's prose is so lyrical that it practically dances across the page. Imagine the Brothers Grimm crossed with the Bronte Sisters and cleansed of the violence and sheer meanness, and you might get an idea of how excellent is this novel. But don't rely on me: go get it, read it immediately, and marvel.
The Romance of the Unicorn
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